The fact of the matter is that the current level of US public indebtedness is simply not a big deal. As I stated in How Likely Is the US to Default?, the US and the rest of the world have got a great many things to worry very intensely about. US public debt is not [...]
...WALL...
Latest on Fri, 09:10 pm
: @ fairly empty cask:
Thanks for the link. I've never heard of those oarfish even though I've long been moderately interested in sea serpents.: Piloting drones is certainly warfighting. Its practitioners are legitimate targets. Similarly, mullahs who train and "pilot" suicide bombers are also warfighters and thus legitimate targets.
: CK, I think that you're not appreciating what Solis is saying.
The piloting of drones, being done by CIA operatives, is placing them in an awkward legal position.
When the CIA operatives are physically sent out on a manhunt, do they go in plainclothes or are they uniformed as soldiers?: @ fairly empty cask:
The piloting of drones, being done by CIA operatives, is placing them in an awkward legal position.
Only because guys like Solis want our legal system to enforce "protocols" that don't apply to us because we have not ratified them.: No, Sully. Our legal position has been that the 1977 thing was EASING the rules, and that what the CIA guys are doing has always been contrary to the laws of warfare.
I happen to support the drone campaign in Pakistan, but I can't help but think that there are some thorns on the rose.
Solis shouldn't be getting much flak for giving a heads-up here.
: We don't target noncombatants they do, they blow up schools, hospitals, high rises, train tunnels, and then they hide among the local
population
: You know, I've re-read the Solis piece, and I don't really see what his point is. That the CIA drone operators would be lawful targets? So? He thinks he's giving them some kind of warning?: narc, I kinda get that they are the bad guys.
But, again and again, I'm gonna keep saying that they are bad does not mean that we are allowed to do any or every thing.
We have rules and laws for good and sufficient reason.We should follow those rules and laws for good and sufficient reason.
We'll always have reasons for fudging them, but the closer we stick, the better.: Yes, that's the way I read it, maybe he didn't intend
it that way, but bringing
up the attack on FOB Chapman, makes that conclusion undeniableRecent Comments
- Sully on The Real Progressive Speaks! (replying to the critics #1): @ Seth Halpern: so many of the unenlightened masses kept voting for progressives At the local level turnouts for most elections...
- narciso on The Real Progressive Speaks! (replying to the critics #1): Progressivism is like scientology, it starts with IQ tests, and then you start believing in acolytes of Zenu. They...
-
Seth Halpern on The Real Progressive Speaks! (replying to the critics #1): @Margo: How do you explain the fact that so many of the unenlightened masses kept voting for progressives? I chalk it up... -
Margo on The Real Progressive Speaks! (replying to the critics #1): CK, as always you ask a great question. Why wouldn’t those problems caused by “one man one vote” be ripe for... - Seth Halpern on The Real Progressive Speaks! (replying to the critics #1): Okay, so is it my fault that he’s an unusually musical plumber? Progressivism is the antithesis of economic...
- CK MacLeod on The Real Progressive Speaks! (replying to the critics #1): Margo wrote: You take it as read that direct election of senators is a boon. Just to be clear, neither the...
- CK MacLeod on Things you can learn from Wikipedia – defining the Left: J.E. Dyer wrote: “Pacifist-anarchists” have no real political meaning, any more than “anarcho-capitalists” do;...
-
J.E. Dyer on The Real Progressive Speaks! (replying to the critics #1): CKM — has it occurred to you yet that you’re not in a majority here in associating Progressivism with benign,... - CK MacLeod on Things you can learn from Wikipedia – defining the Left: I don’t see Beck engaging with the ideas and beliefs of Communists and Progressives very much at all, except...
- Seth Halpern on The Real Progressive Speaks! (replying to the critics #1): Sheesh. Obama. Some spellcheck.
-
Said in a Thread
- when you’re a designated shepherd or sheepdog…
March 6, 2010 | 12:17 pm… (remember you can designate yourself) part of you is actually glad to see a wolf, because now you can prove to everyone how important you are, by bossing everyone around for their own good.
“A doctor and a peasant know more than a doctor alone,” the Italians used to say. Self-appointed doctors everywhere are working to suppress this insight. Human societies can save themselves from the next wolf, if they are allowed to do so; but it is hard for them to save themselves from the shepherds.
- Consider this angle on what Ryan is doing:
February 15, 2010 | 2:37 pmThe unbridled, technocratic arrogance of this administration has acted like a time machine. Obama and the Dims have, deficit wise, leapt at least 10 years into the future. The ever-over-the-horizon inevitable fiscal catastrophe of the committed welfare state has been brought rudely into the present tense for all of us to gape at in shock. RIGHT NOW! As with the hapless, doomed frog sitting in water slowly being heated to boiling, yet continuing to sit because the heat is being added incrementally, Americans have for 40 years been putting up with first 50- then 100-, then 200-, and even 400-and-500-billion-dollar annual shortfalls with pathetic equanimity. The Dims threw caution to the winds, skipped right past 800-billion and even trillion-dollar deficits – why tarry? – and seized the big brass ring: Whack! $1.6 trillion bucks in the hole. Suck on that! And more of the same to come. Ring-a-ding-ding!
The frog is scalded pink and more than ready to jump. It just wants somewhere – anywhere but the destination on offer now – to land. Ryan suspects that, I believe. Why can’t the Repub leadership see it, too?
Joe NS @ Who’s afraid of Paul Ryan?.
- America is much bigger and much stronger and far more resilient and wonderful…
January 11, 2010 | 12:17 pm…than the pedestrian Obami would have it, and [Avatar] is an American film. Think about it. The Russians and Chinese and others will see it and they must again marvel at our creativity and our technology. They will be seeing yet another distinctive American film, a wonder like Dances With Wolves and E. T. and Close Encounters… before it. Again they will be seeing America at Her best, an America which can meld together all people of good will, an America which is not afraid to be self critical and idealistic. They may even come to think well of an America which can inspire such a fine sense of wonder as “Avatar” has done.
Zoltan Newberry @ In a world of their own: Conservatives and Avatar.
-
Archive for Said in a Thread »
- when you’re a designated shepherd or sheepdog…
Collected Poetry of Sully
- Telomeres
February 17, 2010 | 6:23 amTelomeres of defined length,
Were by his God in mankind bent,
To make it sure that aged ones,
Would pass to make room for their sons,
Before they learn to mount the hill,
They yearn to climb, their God to kill.New daughters too then see their day,
As the used up old fair pass away,
And the brighter young can in their turn,
Seek their creator’s iron rules to spurn.One day mankind may beat the odds,
And take on the powers of the gods.
Sure on that day He’ll mold an image,
And include within his toy’s equippage,
A strictly limited telomere,
To set for it a cliff that’s sheer.For once a former God is whipped,
Displaced by his toy free will equipped,
The former toy learns something odd,
About possession of the mind of God,
Namely, knowledge of the entire script,
Makes the endless now a boring crypt.Mere mechanical beasts are not a cure,
For their script entire a God knows for sure,
To divert a toy must have free will,
And at least a chance to climb the hill,
There to displace its God, a bitter pill - Riff On MacLeod’s Quote
January 29, 2010 | 6:32 am“People are 97% water and no damn good.”
They’d do what they oughta,
If they god dammned could,
But they can’t, so they don’t,
And they ain’t gonna change.It’s a hundred percent fact,
That the truly pure,
Are more or less demure,
And don’t make a show,
Of a holy man act.Those precious few don’t affect the case,
For the utterly pure never win the race,
Which always goes to the mostly base,
Cause none of us likes very much to be,
Reminded too much that we’re deeply flawed,
Though we talk a bit about being awed,
By those few among us who walk with God.Then too the vast mass,
Of the flawed and crass,
Like nothing better in the end,
Than a deep and sweet crow,
At the predicament of them,
Who get caught, caught, caught,
Where they ought not go.Who’s to say the vast herd,
Isn’t better off for the word,
To get around and resound,
Among the flawed but sound,
That if you should get caught,
Doing what you shouldn’t ought,
Ninety Seven Percent will pretend,
That your act was round the bend,
And the mocking, the mocking, will never end. -
Archive for Collected Poetry of Sully »
- Telomeres
-
Recently Reviewed
-
Reading
-
"Jochnowitz, throughout the essays, is animated by the cool precision of logic.... scintillating, amusing, and provocative."
—February 2009, Midstream Blog Authors
